I burnt my tongue on the coffee when I took a too-fast sip. Now I can’t stop scraping my tongue over my teeth, aggravating it into a stinging red spot.

There’s jelly on my shirt, over my right breast. I squished it out of the doughnut I was eating when I bit into it.

Wes and Fred are being geeks in his office, pouring over another page turner of a tome, and Gunn….Gunn is making me smile, because he’s over by Angel’s weapons cabinet and he’s swinging a new sword in his two-fisted grip. I bought it on Ebay two weeks ago. It was cheap, relatively speaking, and Angel smiled for nearly half a day after I whipped it out of the packing.

The steel blade catches the lights overhead and flashes like a strobe on every downward stroke Gunn makes.

He’s like the little kid I imagine he never was.

Something catches the corner of my eye.

Well –

Not something.

Angel.

He always catches my eye.

I don’t know when that started.

Not the second time, anyway.

The first time is unforgettable. That night at the Bronze. He came in looking for his One True Love.

He found her too, on a date with another guy. What was his name again?

Oh, yeah.

Owen.

A bookworm, but a cute one.

Into Buffy big time.

I still wonder why she cut him loose but I never asked.

I didn’t do that back then. I wrote Owen off after he showed his preference for the weirdness of Buffy over the fabulousness of me.

But not Angel.

I tried for a while, probably longer than I should have, because he was so cute and mysterious and grown up.

I just didn’t know how grown up at the time.

When I figured it out…well, that was that. Plus, I got distracted by a fixer upper.

When I saw Angel again in L.A., it still didn’t set off any bells. He was just Buffy’s undead ex-lovahhh.

When Wesley told me that was the word she used when she quit the council, I laughed so hard I almost peed on myself.

Then Russell Winters happened to me, and I knew for sure I was going to die. He was going to kill me and drink my blood and probably throw my body away in a trash heap for the garbage collectors to find and someone would notify my family – maybe – and that would be the end of Cordelia Chase.

Only Angel stepped out of the shadows instead, all vampy faced and pissed off about someone named Tina.

All the panic left me, my fear…everything.

I knew I was safe.

It took a while, but he became my family.

Him and Doyle.

Then we lost Doyle and for a little while, it was just us two, trying to find our way around each other and the world. Orphans, I thought, the night we huddled and watched Doyle’s commercial.

Then it was three again, with Wesley. And it was okay. Not the same, not at all, but so good in its own way.

Research man. Vision girl. Hero.

Then Gunn started hanging around, and he added to us, our family. Became the fourth.

Then Fred.

I’m still not sure about her damage, but she’s a fighter, and that’s what makes her one of us.

Even if she reminds me a little of Willow sometimes.

I turn my head and watch Angel walk across the lobby with his broad shoulders and heartbreak eyes.

Darla was a skank but God, she named him so well.

Angel.

My Angel.

Jeez, listen to me. When did I turn into Buffy, staring at Angel with my big, weepy eyes, asking to be loved?

He turns to me and smiles, and my breath catches in my chest, getting choked off by my surprise.

Don’t smile at me like that, big guy.

I’ll get ideas.

None of them good.

For so many reasons.

He turns and heads for my direction and my stomach does this fluttery thing that tells me I may already have won.

God.

Am I in love?

With a eunuch, an emotionally stunted, prone-to-turning-evil undead vampire still in love with a girl who died saving the world?

Am I stupid or what?

He approaches the counter and grabs a doughnut.

Hmm.

He doesn’t eat. He never does. Not even when he cooks us breakfast. I know vampires can because Giles used to spend a lot of valuable long distance phone time complaining about Spike eating him out of house and home.

But Angel never does.

I think it’s a way of separating himself from us, of keeping the lines drawn.

As if he needs the added cross to remind himself he’s a vampire. But whatever. That’s Angel for you.

Trying to out-martyr the martyrs.

Then he walks around the counter, still smiling at me, and sets the maple bar on my desk, nestled in tissue paper.

He reaches over and swipes his finger through the stain on my shirt, sticking it in his mouth and sucking the jam off.

He makes a nummy sound in his throat and walks away again, leaving me to stare after him and trying not to sink to the floor in a puddle of messy goo.